Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) said on Tuesday its 100% owned Diavik diamond mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories (NWT) has successfully completed the installation of its 3.5 megawatt capacity solar power plant.
The project represents the largest off-grid solar power plant across Canada’s territories, the Australian miner said. The Diavik mine is located about 200 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, at the bottom of Lac de Gras.
Panelists at RapNet event highlight provenance challenges.
One of the ongoing questions in the diamond industry is whether shoppers care about the source of the stones they buy. For Olivia Landau, CEO of online natural-diamond retailer The Clear Cut, the problem is more fundamental.
“Everyone just assumes that natural diamonds come from one place, and it’s Africa, and Africa’s one country, and it is a blood diamond,” Landau said in a RapNet panel discussion at the recent JCK Las Vegas show. “We are starting from square one.”
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De Beers Group and Mountain Province Diamonds announced that their joint venture Gahcho Kué diamond mine has surpassed the $2-billion spending threshold with Northwest Territories and Indigenous business.
The milestone represents 61% of the total $3.2 billion spent on the project since 2015 when construction began. Local businesses supply welding, transportation logistics, trucking, passenger and cargo flights, labour, and camp catering.
Tourism could be central to the country’s post-mining plans, says Debswana executive.
What connects Prince Harry and Kim Kardashian? Probably quite a lot of things, but among them is that they have both been to Botswana.
Harry famously vacationed with Meghan Markle in the southern African country, while Kardashian has visited the Jwaneng diamond mine. The latter might not have been the most glamorous place in which the celebrity has set foot: Jwaneng, like most diamond mines, is a massive pit in the ground.
Nunavut’s qamutik hitched to growing mining revenues; NWT accentuates upside of big government
The tale of two territories remains divergent. Nunavut’s 3.4 per cent growth in gross domestic product in 2023 was the strongest in the country, according to initial data from Statistics Canada in May.
The usual players were front and centre. Mining’s share of Nunavut’s GDP continues to expand, reaching a record high 46.7 per cent in 2023, up significantly from 28.5 per cent in 2019. All of that gold and iron extraction — and the related spin offs — represented $1.37 billion for the economy last year, a slight increase from $1.33 billion in 2022.
The European Union has extended the “sunrise period” for sanctions on Russian diamonds by six months and added an important concession for goods that predate the rules.
The traceability program for imports of rough and polished natural diamonds will become mandatory on March 1, 2025, and not on September 1, 2024, the EU said in a statement Monday.
Matthew Hart on mayhem in the diamond industry.
The diamond world was stunned when De Beers, the storied diamond miner, announced this month it was ditching its lab-grown diamond business. De Beers had been selling lab-grown gems online through its Lightbox brand for six years, at prices its competitors found hard to beat.
But the lab-grown diamond price was crashing, and De Beers will now focus its $94 million Oregon diamond factory away from gemstone production and onto something much more exciting: diamonds for targeted industrial uses.
Despite their widespread popularity and cultural significance, it turns out this popular engagement gem isn’t as rare as we may think. So, why are diamonds so expensive? Several factors contribute to their high price. Let’s unpack each of them to see if it’s worth shelling out a small fortune for these precious stones or if we should seek an alternative.
While diamonds might not be the rarest minerals on the planet, the specific type of diamond used in jewelry isn’t that easy to come by. Formed deep within the Earth’s mantle billions of years ago, only a small amount makes it to the surface. According to Info Diamond, only about 20 percent of rough diamonds are suitable for gem purposes.
Diamond-rich African nations are ramping up production to fill the gap left by the G7 sanctions on Russian diamonds. But not all countries are happy about the ban.
Earlier this year, the G7 , a group of wealthy nations comprising the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Japan, and the European Union banned rough diamonds mined in Russia.The ban was part of many sanctions on Russia imposed by Western nations and their allies for President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
But the sanctions against Russian diamonds, intended to weaken Russia’s economy in light of its aggression, could pose a potential risk to the global diamond market’s stability.
SI-clarity goods performed well, but overall trading was mixed.
Diamond trading at JCK Las Vegas set a cautious tone as the US consumer market remained uncertain, exhibitors reported.
The important fair, which ended Monday, mirrored the mixed trends visible in the sector. Loose-diamond suppliers gave varied reviews, with lab-grown competition continuing to impact sales. Certain categories of natural — chiefly stones with SI clarity — performed well.
A six-year synthetic diamond experiment by De Beers is being abandoned in the first aftershock of the failed $49 billion attempt by BHP to buy mining rival Anglo American, the current owner of the diamond industry leader.
The controversial decision to make and market synthetic, or laboratory grown diamonds, was an attempt by De Beers to be a player at the cheap end of the gem business, a place in which it has never been comfortable. Lured by the opportunity to sell man-made gems to a mass audience there was always the risk that De Beers would get trapped in a race to the bottom in both quality and price.
De Beers will cease creating synthetic diamonds for its Lightbox consumer brand in a strategic revamp that will also see it manufacture and sell natural polished. “We believe the value of lab-grown diamonds lies in technology rather than in jewelry,” De Beers CEO Al Cook said Friday at the company’s JCK Las Vegas breakfast event.
The miner’s Element Six business will streamline its three chemical vapor deposition (CVD) plants, merging them all into its $94 million facility in Portland, Oregon. That plant will pivot into a technology hub that produces diamonds for industrial applications, executives explained.
De Beers draws its value from the diamond market. That value has come under scrutiny after last month’s dramatic bid by BHP Billiton to acquire Anglo American, the 85% shareholder of De Beers — a deal Anglo rejected. The offer, along with the diamond market’s weak performance in 2023, has fueled speculation about the future of De Beers.
Anglo confirmed the rumors on May 14, while laying out its strategy to unlock value after rejecting a second offer from BHP. De Beers will “be divested or demerged, to improve strategic flexibility for both De Beers and Anglo American,” the company stated.
Few destinations stir up a sense of unparalleled luxury and cinematic history like Place Vendôme. From its seminal maisons to its storied clients and the magnificent jewels they covet, we pinpoint the exceptional moments that left a lasting imprint on the legacy of high jewellery
At the epicentre of exceptional jewellery lies one Parisian address: Place Vendôme. Its history, punctuated by war, revolt and the rise and fall of dynasties is almost as dazzling as the pieces its workshops produce. Completed in 1699 by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, whose design stamp can be traced across France’s architectural high points, from the Palace of Versailles to Notre-Dame, the ambitious feat of urban design was initiated to frame the statue of then ruler Louis XIV.
(Bloomberg) — The diamond industry has already been feeling the heat. Prices have slumped, Russian sanctions are threatening trade and the emergence of lab-grown gems is eating into some key traditional markets. Now, the sector’s most dominant name is being cast adrift.
Anglo American Plc on Tuesday said it will spin off or sell its De Beers business, ending an almost century-long relationship with the industry’s most famous name. The move, part of a wide12)r restructuring to fend off a $43 billion approach from BHP Group, is a seismic shock for the diamond world.
